The prime ministers say that their job is to make The Bahamas for Bahamians. They will provide jobs, create development and protect the environment while putting the country on an equal footing with all developed nations. Tourism is the vehicle they have chosen to do this.
Tourism means that Bahamians do not have to work in the hot sun. They do not have to plough and sow; they do not have to break rocks for roads. There are Haitians or machines for that.
As a result of this push for tourism, agriculture has died. BAMSI will change that.
Tourism says that it provides jobs for locals, but it needs the uncontrolled, unregulated ability to buy land and develop high-end resorts for multimillionaires from abroad. It promises to create job opportunities for locals in the communities. But then it stops encouraging its visitors to go outside the resort. It becomes all-inclusive to prevent so much leakage into the local economy, and the deed is done.
Those small businesses promised tourist dollars begin to fall away, or whither and die because the resort controls the tourist's day. The mom and pop taxi business, restaurants, shops and bars are strangled as the resorts build higher walls and stop locals from crossing over their land. So, more locals seek 'jobs' at the resort. This has happened in many countries and on many islands from the Caribbean to Africa and back. Yet we still look to tourism for its development.
The jobs it offers are low-level, for the most part. The higher-level jobs are reserved. The money is meant to come in from taxes and other expenses the resort pays in the community, but these, given the way the Hotels Encouragement Act is written and buttressed by deeply secret heads of agreements, are not paid. Instead they whisk money out. They bring in executives because the community does not offer sufficiently educated and skilled workers.
Education
As The Bahamas moves into its 43rd year of independence, the prime ministers say that their government will focus on education. The education ministers say they are encouraged by the failing D and E grades, not to mention the Gs. According to them, there are more people with As and Bs. But the spread is huge. The majority still sits on the bottom.
An examination of exam results for the last 10 years will reveal a slow, perhaps, but very steady creep to the left. Zero is on the left. Studies show that the workforce is undereducated. The IDB highlights this as it argues that the soft skills necessary for resorts to thrive, are sadly lacking. Literacy and numeracy are far below the requirements for many jobs. The majority are only able to work at certain jobs and those people with the high grades we are encouraged by, well, they will go off to university on a scholarship and they probably won't return as they say they can't get the good jobs even when they return with their education and experience.
So it was in the beginning, so it continues now! We are not teaching the children to be critical thinkers, to be able to solve problems, deescalate conflict or answer questions properly. The levels have plummeted, yet education receives so much money. All we need do is read the exam results to see what has happened. However, we promote training over education.
As the College of The Bahamas becomes The University of The Bahamas, it should be embracing this challenge, but there many roadblocks: Where will the students with the requisite level for university come from? What will the university undertake? Will it focus on being a training academy for the industry that will give jobs? Or will it focus on creating critical thinkers and molding people to lead the country into the future through their careers?
These are two distinctly different areas and cannot both be offered by the same institution at the same time. The promise has been made, however, the push to do this requires a serious amount of capital. When the university does open, where will its feeder schools be? Will the same students with the Ds and Gs in English and maths flood the rooms?
As the tourism industry itself claims, they need educated workers. However, workers are one step away from slavery just as they are one paycheck away from broke. In order to run the high-end gated resorts and communities with the beautifully poised and coiffed visitors, they need people who are able to speak without cussing, answer a question without snorting, provide service without slapping their weave.
They need people who can think and function and who will not disappear after the second-paycheck Friday and show up four days later. Those people have no place in that world, nor can they fill in the application to begin the experience of working there. Ask any HR manager. So, we have an education problem and the community lives one step away from poverty because they are undereducated and underemployed.
Development
Many of those people described above will not be sitting at the development table when the top-secret heads of agreements are signed. The fact that companies are swaning in and being given islands and cays for a promise of employment and a few half dollars will not raise alarms with them. We offer them jobs, they are happy for a while.
The prime ministers say that big resorts and gated communities may not be a good idea because of their propensity for failure. Yet they have given away the islands to them. The local shop on Bimini, Exuma, Acklins, Harbour Island cannot compete with the resort. However, people remain mute. The town meetings do not happen as they should, so speculation is rife.
Regulation is non-existent and so no one really oversees resort development. How much land are they really taking? How are they cutting into the mangroves and the reefs to provide another 'natural' harbor? How many new dredging projects for harbors are happening in the parks? These questions are all inconvenient, but may need answers.
Why are there more people working without work permits on the islands, cays, boats, yachts, than there are Bahamians working? Where are the supposed linkages between local development and foreign direct investment? Perhaps to see those linkages, we must go back to the hailed fraternity of the 1960s and 1970s that was never left out of any deal because they ran the country, and thereby created a kingdom.
Honestly, when the resort buys into the island, when the multimillionaire buys the cay, they are all going to stake their land out as private property from the low-water mark, no locals need try to use the beach. As our banks give away loans to those who assist this model of development and choose not to collect the payments, the unofficial banks, outlawed by many for providing questionable financial services, send money unabated and unchecked to foreign lands, and the country sinks further into walled cities of centuries past. Peasants are not welcome.
Yachts cruise in through our lovely blue waters teaming with fish and other marine life that depend on reefs, mangroves and clean air and sea, they come loaded with all their goods and servers they will need for their entire stay in these lovely islands. They need buy nothing locally.
As the land washes away and the local is pushed into a corner, how positive is tourism really for Bahamian development? Our culture will be vanquished and our homes leveled as lands are quieted and coasts annexed, but tourism is still seen as the development's golden Trojan horse.
As the locals become less educated, the propensity to think critically is killed, FDI rules the cays, rocks and islands of the Commonwealth, party politics mean little in a world that has been removed from their rule through their own devices. Once the power has been given to FDI to do as it wishes, it will.
As education levels drop, there are fewer people who can or will challenge. As development becomes tourism the country becomes less likely to succeed unless the success is focused on those few good students who will not return because the FDI management controls the market along with a tiny group of their supporters. Erik Paul calls this the political economy of violence. In order to have real development from tourism one must own it and one must be educated, otherwise what develops is an economy the bleeds money to FDI leeches and undereducated and underemployed workers tied to a job without careers. Does it sound familiar?
o Ian Bethell-Bennett is a professor at The College of The Bahamas.
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